Clinton’s Last Hurdle Gone, Experts Say : Campaign: Tsongas’ exit leaves no serious threat to Arkansas governor’s nomination. But Brown could prove to be a divisive factor.

In the near-universal view of pundits and Democratic Party professionals, Paul E. Tsongas’ decision Thursday to suspend his campaign means that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton no longer faces an adversary capable of taking the presidential nomination away from him.

“It’s a new world, isn’t it?” said Clinton deputy campaign manager George Stephanopoulos of the Democratic contest in which Clinton’s sole adversary now is former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

In terms of the campaign’s long-range planning, Tsongas’ departure “speeds everything up,” Stephanopoulos said. For one thing, he contended, Clinton is now freer to turn away from the intraparty argument over the nomination and instead emphasize the themes he hopes to use in the general election campaign.

Clinton also is expected to increase efforts to rally party leaders to close ranks behind him, a task his aides believe will be eased by the pervasive antipathy among Democratic higher-ups toward Brown, who has made attacks on the political Establishment a staple of his campaign.

As Tsongas prepared his departure speech Thursday, Clinton began stressing the importance of unity to achieving victory in the fall.

“I have always believed that Democrats often forfeit the November election by the nature of the primary process, and I’ve worked very, very hard to keep that from happening this time,” he told reporters in Little Rock, Ark., before heading off to keep a campaign date in Hartford, Conn.

“I hope this (Tsongas’ exit) will make it even more likely that this can be the case,” Clinton said.

But before Clinton and his thus-far triumphant crew can fully turn their attention to these long-range objectives, they must first dispose of Brown. And no one really knows how long this will take.

In the view of some party professionals, Brown, with his freewheeling style of attack, could make the rest of Clinton’s pursuit to the nomination more divisive than its start.

“This is not going to be a pleasant experience that the Clinton campaign is going to have,” said Bill Carrick, former consultant to the presidential campaign of Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey. “As long as Jerry Brown is a credible candidate, he’ll get attention and make maximum use of it.”

A few think Brown might be capable of halting Clinton’s bandwagon short of the 2,145 delegates needed to assure nomination, leading to the possibility of a deadlocked Democratic convention that would ultimately turn to some third person. But any such last-minute entrant would face formidable obstacles, particularly having to explain why he, or she, had not entered the race in the first place.

There is no evidence that Brown can expect to inherit Tsongas voters en masse. Los Angeles Times exit polls of Democratic primary voters have shown no clear advantage in attracting Tsongas backers for either Clinton or Brown, although Clinton seems to fare a bit better in most of the states polled. In one measure of support, slightly more Tsongas voters said they would never vote for Brown than said they would never support Clinton.

The Brown forces are focusing on how he can best exploit his new-found prominence and apportion his meager resources and precious time in the forthcoming struggles in Connecticut, which holds its primary Tuesday, and in Wisconsin and New York which vote April 7.

“What we have here is a little time and a serious opportunity to influence the political process,” said Brown adviser Michael Ford, a veteran of half a dozen Democratic presidential campaigns. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”

Ford dismissed the doubts of other politicians about Brown’s chances for winning the nomination as “immaterial,” asking pointedly: “Which of those guys would have believed (Brown) would wind up as one of the last two candidates in the race?”

As a result of Tsongas’ withdrawal, Ford said he was braced for “a cascade of endorsements” for Clinton from party leaders. But Ford argued that Brown would be able to use this show of high-level support to dramatize the difference between himself and Clinton.

“Brown can say this shows that Clinton is the candidate of the incumbent party, the institution that Brown is running against because it is corrupt and has let us all down,” Ford said.

One reason Brown is viewed as potentially more threatening than Tsongas is that he seems able to mount a broader assault on Clinton. The competition between Clinton and Tsongas boiled down almost entirely to a battle of economic messages that Clinton won easily by depicting Tsongas as an advocate of “trickle-down” GOP-style economics.

But, says Clinton campaign manager David Wilhelm: “With Brown it’s a little harder. He was Mr. Environment in Colorado, Mr. Fair Trade in Michigan. We’ll have to see what he turns up as in New York.”

Unlike Tsongas, Brown has shown himself not the least bit hesitant to attack Clinton about personal problems from his past that continue to dog his candidacy--a tactic some Democratic leaders fear could ultimately wreck the party’s chances of regaining the White House if Clinton is the nominee.

“Brown runs as a bomb thrower, looking for an open sore in each state that he can exploit,” said Stanley Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster.

Clinton aides expect Brown to thrive in New York’s overheated media market, attracting coverage that will somewhat offset his limited funds for advertising.

And New York Democratic Party Chairman John Marino predicted that Brown will do well among environmentalists in New York City’s suburbs who are concerned about the issue of nuclear power.

Wisconsin Democratic Chairman Jeff Neubauer, a Clinton backer, expects that blue-collar workers hit hard by the recession, traditional liberals and environmentalists in his state will also provide a receptive audience for Brown’s message of insurgency and protest.

Neubauer said it is conceivable that Brown could win the Wisconsin contest against Clinton. “Here anything could happen,” he said. “It’s an unconventional electorate.”

Ford suggested that Brown, now that he is assured of increased visibility, might attack Clinton less and put more stress on the positive side of his candidacy.

“He’s not going to change what he says, but he may change the way he says it,” Ford said. “Now he has the opportunity to appeal to discontented voters without beating up on Clinton.”

But if the Clinton campaign launches attack ads against Brown, Ford added, “that will open the door” for Brown to reply in kind.

And Clinton aides indicated that they do plan to devote more of the campaign’s media budget to attacking Brown, following a strategy used in Michigan with a commercial lambasting Brown’s flat-tax proposal as a policy that would benefit the rich while hurting the poor and middle class.

“We’re not going to gratuitously attack someone who is 900 delegates behind us,” said Clinton’s manager Wilhelm, “but in politics you can’t just sit back and let the other guy define” the campaign debate.

Times staff writers David Lauter and Robert W. Stewart contributed to this story.